Social Science / "Modern Monetary Theory" (MMT)

One MMT Insight*:

"Excuse me, Senator X, but - before the chairman answers - let me get this straight. Are you suggesting that government deficits ADD to savings? Haven’t we been hearing for years that they take away from savings?" Interview with the Chairman. Taxes, Spending, Deficits, Inflation: The Workings of Federal Finance, By Warren Mosler, 2019

Africa+ MMT Lessons 

MUST: Mallence Bart-Williams introduces Sierra Leon: "The richest country in the world; it's clearly Africa that aids the West" | 2015, TedTalk
 
"IMF and the World Bank can be seen more as a giant vacuum cleaner designed to suck resource and financial wealth out of the poorer nations either through legal or illegal means, whichever generates the largest flows. So while Africa is wealthy, its interaction with the world monetary and trade systems, leaves millions of its citizens in extreme poverty.", 2017, Bill Mitchell
 
 
 
 
 

MMT Liberates Politics

 
Imagine if the US went from spending trillions on the military, wars and imperial conquests for the 0.00001% - to spend trillions on welfare, education, research & the US society. LJ

FT, Forbes+ on MMT 2019

"Perhaps the biggest irony of all is that we already basically follow MMT-consistent policies when it comes to things like wars. But our own citizens? Sorry, we can't afford that!" Does MMT Have Any Scholarly Validity?, Jan 2019, JT Harvey, Forbes
 
"Modern monetary theory is simply a different way of looking at fiscal policy, a way of describing what the real-world constraints on spending look like. It is in fact very close to how people in Washington, D.C. already approach spending. Again, we're not talking about what they say. Rather, we're talking about what they do. America has never worried about financing its priorities, Jan 2019, Brendan Greeley, FT 
 
"Long story short: money is not a scarce resource. Labor is, oil is, clean water is. Money is not. Money can be and is created with a keystroke, just as easily as I am typing these words. This is true in both the public and private sectors." But Can The Gov. Afford It?, Jan 2019, John T. Harvey, Forbes
 

Just Money = Just Society

"The proposition underlying the conference was that money’s design is an elemental part of governance. If that is right, then we cannot have a just and equitable democracy without a just and equitable monetary design." Money as a Democratic Medium: Q&A w. Christine Desan, Jan. 2019, Harvard Law Today

Keynes, Lerner & Mosler

“What can we afford to spend?” - “Anything we can actually do we can afford”. [Anything] “as ambitious and glorious as the minds of our engineers and architects and social planners can conceive..” Keynes, refs. in comment to Wray text: The Reality of the Present and the Challenge of the Future: Fagg Foster for the 21st Century, 2014
 
"[Lerner's MMT-like Functional Finance] argument is impeccable, but heaven help anyone who tries put it across to the plain man at this #stage of the #evolution of our #ideas." -- Keynes, 1943
 
“The only thing coming between us and unimaginable prosperity is the space between our ears” -- Warren Mosler

MMT Undoing Neoliberalism

The most important book in world today?
James K. Galbraith in the foreword: "We have co-authored testimony and the occasional article, and I attest firmly that his contributions to those efforts
exceeded mine.": The 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy, 2010, Warren Mosler/ Link Free Book Pdf
 
 
"I was reading John Maynard Keynes recently – circa 1928 – that is, 8 years before the publication of the General Theory with his Treatise on Money intervening. (..) The stark reality is that 88 years later, he could have written exactly the same article and would have been ‘right on the money’. We are being led by imbeciles, 2018, Bill Mitchell
 
"Why do so many people who should know better argue that Neoliberalism ‘does not exist’?" The Political Movement that Dared not Speak its own Name: The Neoliberal Thought Collective Under Erasure. 2014 P. Mirowski
 
"What is neoliberalism? A programme for destroying collective structures which may impede the pure market logic." The Essence of Neoliberalism, 1998, Pierre Bourdieu
 
"This short book explains what “national debt” really means in the modern U.S. financial system, based on ideas developed during the author’s years as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and as CEO of banks in the U.S. and China." Freedom from National Debt, 2013, by Frank N Newman
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
"With his political outlook shaped by his observation of poverty when growing up in Liverpool, Shore concluded that only increased government intervention in the economy could eliminate unemployment and lead to a more egalitarian society. His views on the positive role of the state, and the desirability of having "the commanding heights" of the economy in public ownership, were the antithesis of the laissez-faire, neoliberal policies which successive British governments, Conservative and Labour, have followed since 1979." Peter Shore, Labour's forgotten prophet, 2011, Clark, Guardian
 
 
"Not only are people further up the social scale happier than those with lower incomes, but they also enjoy longer lives. Inequality matters. Our politicians target economic growth when they should give it less emphasis. They don’t target inequality, when it matters much more." How to win a Federal election, 2019, By Dr Steven Hail
  

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)

"The process by which money is created is so simple that the mind is repelled. (..) The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. -- John Kenneth Galbraith 
 
 
 
“Once a nation parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes that nation's laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile. (..) So why let a whole nation fall into a depression, because of a vitiated control of these figures?" Mackenzie King, leader of Canadian Liberal Party, 1935. Related Book In This Age of Plenty: A Vision of the Economic Order in Canada Along Social Credit Lines, 2012, by Louis Even 
 
"The state nobility, which preaches the withering away of the state and the undivided reign of the market and the consumer, the commercial substitute for the citizen, has kidnapped the state: it has made the public good a private good, has made the 'public thing', res publica, the Republic, its own thing. (..) The national states are undermined from outside by these financial forces, and they are undermined from inside by those who act as the accomplices of these financial forces, in other words, the financiers, bankers and finance ministry officials. I think that the dominated groups in society have an interest in defending the state, particularly in its social aspect." [talk] 'Against the Destruction of a Civilization'. Pierre Bourdieu: Acts of Resistance, 1998: 25 
  
"So ask yourself this question: If The Federal Reserve can create trillions of dollars with a single keystroke, and the Fed is the government’s bank, then why does President Obama claim we’ve “run out” of money?"  Where Did the Federal Reserve Get All that Money?, 2012, Stephanie Kelton
 
"Doesn’t it strike you as odd that, for more than five decades now, the U.S. government has been issuing and spending trillions of dollars of U.S. FIAT currency, and not once has a mainstream economist, journalist, or political leader found it worthy of consideration to even try to explain—from the perspective of what economic policy is all about—what a sovereign fiat currency actually is, and how it functions?" Money: The High Cost of Betrayal, March 1, 2018 by J. D. Alt, Naked Capitalism  
 
"Ask any congressman (as I have many times) or private citizen how it all works, and he or she will tell you emphatically that: “…the government has to either tax or borrow to get the funds to spend, just like any household has to somehow get the money it needs to spend.” And from this comes the inevitable question about healthcare, defense, social security, and any and all government spending: How are you going to pay for it???!!! - So, how am I uniquely qualifed to be promoting these [tax cuts, welfare and job] proposals? My confidence comes from 40 years’ experience in the fnancial and economic realm. I would venture that I’m perhaps the only person who can answer the question: “How are you going to pay for it?” My book takes on this issue  and encourages the return of economics study to the operational realities of our monetary system." -- Warren Mosler [the 'father of MMT'], The 7 Deadly Innocent Frauds of Economic Policy, 2010  
 
 
"Austerity" means that all the civilized premises of life in this country have to be attacked, have to be undermined. The hospitals have to be starved of funds; the poor people have to remain poor and indeed get poorer. Everything has to be cut back. Councils have to be lose somethink like up to 40% of the money they have available to do normal things for people." -- Oct. 2018, John Pilger (quote at 13 minutes)
 
"The movement toward the neoliberal utopia of a pure and perfect market is made possible by the politics of financial deregulation. And it is achieved through the transformative and, it must be said, destructive action of all of the political measures (..) In this way, a Darwinian world emerges - it is the struggle of all against all at all levels of the hierarchy, which finds support through everyone clinging to their job and organisation under conditions of insecurity, suffering, and stress." Pierre Bourdieu, Essence Neoliberalism, 1998, Le Monde Diplomatique
 
Pierre Bourdieu had the most acute critical analysis of neoliberalism, even to the point that he sensed neoliberalists' greatest trick is to make the nation state and the politicians appear powerless with regard to controlling and spending a nation's finances (unless it is for the military, banks and finance). But he did not have the intellectual grip on the monetary system allowing him to destroy neoliberalism completely. Warren Mosler & MMT do. 
 
Randall Wray exlains in a lecture on the intellectual roots of MMT that Mosler uncovered the truth about money that the economic profession had buried for fifty years and continue to suppress. And sociologists document that the Nobel Prize in Economics was created by the Swedish National Bank to prevent economists from learning the Social Democratic Political Economy, which was behind the economic growth after WW2:
 
"The Nobel Factor (Princeton UP, 2016) tells how the prize, created by the Swedish central bank, emerged from a conflict between central bank orthodoxy and social democracy. The aim was to use the halo of the Nobel brand to enhance central bank authority and the prestige of market-friendly economics, in order to influence the future of Sweden and the rest of the developed world. And this strategy has worked, with sometimes disastrous results for societies striving to cope with the requirements of economic theory and deregulated markets." HS Neoliberal Plan Destroy Civilization
 
"Economics has never accepted the idea that the public sector creates wealth. But it does—and acknowledging that can lead to sweeping change." Yes, Government Creates Wealth, 2018, by Mariana Mazzucato (excerpeted from her The Value of Everything) 
 
"Full employment and price stability is at the heart of MMT. The body of theory and policy applications that stem from that theory integrate the notion of a nominal anchor as a core element. That is what this blog is about. (..) I have written extensively about inflation – in my academic work and in many blogs. In my recent book with Joan Muysken – Full Employment abandoned  [Free_WP 2006] – we considered inflation as a central concept. In my PhD work, unemployment and inflation were the central themes. My contribution to the development of MMT over many years has been focused on inflation as a primary concern. - So at the risk of repetition, here is some more on inflation." Modern monetary theory and inflation – Part 1, 2010, Bill Mitchell
    
"Politicians are ripping out the backbone of our civilisation. [Bec. of Neoliberal Ideology] Because debt. Because insolvency. Because inflation. Because Phillips curve. Because “the government is like a household +has to balance its books”. Politicians do destructive things, because you [the economic profession] gave them permission. Then we discover the work of Warren Mosler, Bill Mitchell, L. Randall Wray, Stephanie Kelton, Pavlina Tcherneva, Steven Hail... Economists who are actually bothered about changing public consciousness around economics. 

Because it’s a matter of life and death. We learn MMT. We learn that monetarily sovereign governments can never “run out of money” - the very fallacy that policies of austerity were founded on, which persist to this day. We learn MMT. We learn that monetarily sovereign governments can never “run out of money” - the very fallacy that policies of austerity were founded on, which persist to this day. We come to you [econ. profession] and call you out on your complicity with orthodoxy. Your response to MMT: “Oh yeah, what you’re saying is nothing new, we knew this all along...” Oh did you? Our response to you is: Where. The. Fuck. Were. You? Because we looked, and we found bullshit, and then we found MMT." Dear non-MMT economists, I’m sorry that your feelings are getting hurt lately, Oct. 2018, Christian Reilly
 
"In response to these challenging times, economist William Mitchell and political theorist Thomas Fazi reconceptualise the nation state as a vehicle for progressive change. They show how despite the ravages of neoliberalism, the state still contains resources for democratic control of a nation’s economy and finances." Reclaiming the State. A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World, 2017, Mitchell, Fazi 
 

MMT Insights continually confirmed by National Banks  

"In February 2010, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) published a working paper (No. 297)... It argues categorically that the mainstream propositions about money and banking are incorrect and uninformative. Its essential insights confirm the fundamental propositions of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). (..) The problem for all of us – but more so the unemployed and poor – is that they are influential lies." When central bankers debunk mainstream monetary theory, 2012, Bill Mitchell 
 
"Critics have argued that MMT has this all wrong because the system requires the government to have numbers on its balance sheet before it can spend — i.e. the government is not allowed to run an overdraft and is, therefore, constrained by cash on hand. Here’s what Frank Newman thinks of that critique:" Former Dept. Secretary of the U.S. Treasury [Frank N. Newman] Says Critics of MMT are “Reaching”, 2013, by St. Kelton
 
"The *core* strength of MMT is without a doubt its superior understanding of monetary operations. And that is a debt we all owe to @wbmosler for his careful tutelage in the early years." @StephanieKelton, Twitter, January 2019
 
"If there are any central bankers or treasury officials reading this who wish to be briefed on MMT, please message me on twitter to arrange a meeting thanks." @wbmosler, Twitter, January 2019
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Given the fact that all the Western professors in economics and the national banks first began to understand money creation (again) after Warren Mosler began his lectures and writing on the subject, it seems only fair that he should be included here, in an interesting blog post: Mosler on “Where Does Money Come From?”, by Alexander Douglas
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
NEW from MMT International Conference in Kansas, September 2017: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
James K Galbraith Reviews MMT 

Readings

 
 
 
 
 
 
NEW BOOK Bill Mitchell & Thomas Fazi: Reclaiming the State. A Progressive Vision of Sovereignty for a Post-Neoliberal World. Pluto Press, September, 2017
 
 
'If you had combined the economics study with studies in psychology and sociology, you would have soon realised that what was being taught in your economics course was total nonsense.' Bill Mitchell: 'Falling enrolments mainstream econ. programs is desirable outcome, 2017  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
“In some ways all MMT is doing is describing the real world. Neo-classical theory is telling you about a fantasy planet.
Steve Keen, 2017
“What is neoliberalism?
A progr. for destroying collective structures which may impede the pure market logic.
Pierre Bourdieu, 1998
“What is MMT? - The factual explanation of fiat money that destroys neoliberal dogmas and opens up for political choices to rebuild collective structures.
Homo Sociologicus, 2017
“One cannot win the Nobel Prize in Economics, if one understands the Economy.
Michael Hudson, 2016
“95% of all declared 'progressives' are effectively operating in a neoliberal space.
Bill Mitchell, 2017
“We are destroying our civilization because of a wrong economic thinking
Warren Mosler, 2013

MMT Economists

Scott Fullwiler 
Scott Ferguson
Trond Anderson
 
 

Research & Institutions 

 
Hans Werner Sinn
Robert Skidelsky